


[RE:built]

by lady_mab



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, twilight mirage zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 05:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20925185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_mab/pseuds/lady_mab
Summary: Acre Seven watches as new Divines are brought into the world, and as High Clef Nideo blesses them with a purpose and a name.These names are not new names. She has seen them before, but in their ignorance, the Divine Free States think they are creating values that will last for generations. They think they are creating a legacy to carry them into the future.Instead, they are slapping a new coat of paint over a history best left forgotten.





	[RE:built]

**Author's Note:**

> _What if,_ Nideo asked his people, _Gumption could be distributed throughout each of their all-too-few Divines? What if they simply couldn’t die? What if their service could be secured, forever?_ And so a promise snapped, of life and death: the DFS brought into fruition Independence's old prophecy, a world where the Divines would be eternal servants.  
\- Twilight Mirage, episode 67 - _Futura Free, Part 4_ || [track 30: "Secure"](https://notquitereal.bandcamp.com/track/secure)

Acre Seven stands on the walkway overlooking the workshop. She stands there for what feels like forever, watching as piece by piece, Gumption is torn apart. As Empyrean finds its new perch. As bits and pieces of an old life are turned into a new one.

This has all been done before. This has all been done before. This has _all_ been done before.

Acre Seven sits on the catwalk, swinging her legs into open space. She stands, watching. She paces, back and forth, never able to find the words she wants. Not with the same eloquence as the High Clef Nideo.

Nideo speaks with a conviction that his followers feel with a reverent passion, but Acre Seven doubts. After all that has happened, where does he find this confidence? Where does he find this confidence?

_Where does he find this confidence?_

Or is it a mask, glued to his face, so that even he has started to believe his own words--despite the bullshit that they are.

What does his passion mean to her? What does their loss mean to a planet? (But she knows of loss. Her throat still burns from when she mourned her Potent. Her eyes still sting from tears, new and unfamiliar. Her throat burns, her eyes sting, from when she almost lost her Potent a second time.)

("Do not touch him," she hisses, and she thinks that, perhaps, the wrath of a planet will quell their arrogance. "Do not touch him.")

(Nideo tells them to leave Potency be, and so they do. Because he asked. Not because she demanded it.)

At least he is safe. At least he is secure. At least he is secure, she thinks as she watches them tear Gumption apart piece by piece. As Empyrean's wings make new promises. As this all happens again.

Acre Seven watches as new Divines are brought into the world, and as High Clef Nideo blesses them with a purpose and a name.

These names are not new names. She has seen them before, but in their ignorance, the Divine Free States think they are creating values that will last for generations. They think they are creating a legacy to carry them into the future.

Instead, they are slapping a new coat of paint over a history best left forgotten.

Unity. (_Integrity._)

Valor. (_Righteousness._)

Strength. (_Rigour._)

She watches each of them with their new names and their old ideals lead the States into a new direction.

Acre Seven stands with Nideo on the catwalk, overlooking the construction of the new Divines, and she wonders, what does his passion his confidence his arrogance mean to her.

"We will leave Potency alone," he assures her, in a tired voice, a man who has repeated the same thing over and over again. _We will leave Potency alone._

_Leave Potency alone._

"You are going about this the wrong way," she tells him instead.

"You think there is a right way?"

_No_, she thinks, but does not say anything.

Nideo sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He sighs and scrubs at his face in exhaustion.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head and heaves a sigh. There is no version of this where he is not tired. There is no time in which he is not at the end of his rope, a desperate man willing to make sacrifices.

"You could let it end," Acre Seven suggests, but even then it doesn't sound like the right answer. A desperate plea of her own. "Let it end. Let it end."

"I have not worked this hard for this to die on my watch." His anger flows from him in waves, a tide, catching her up and swirling her about in the eddies of his frustration. "We have not come so far to just _let it end_."

Empyrean cries out, wings emblazoned with a new promise, and Acre Seven finds herself speechless at this motivation.

She finds herself flustered, that he would not listen to her. That he would dismiss her. That to him, she is nothing but a lingering reminder of a broken past. "This path you are forging is not going to be that easy. They will hate you for it. They will hate you. They will hate you. It is not going to be as simple as new Divines, new names. They will still remember who you were."

Nideo stares down his nose at her, and for the first time in a long time, since losing Potency, Acre Seven feels small. In the face of a man whose belief fuels a movement that spans _worlds_, who is she?

"What do we care?" he asks, and she does not have an answer for him.

Long after he has left, and she stays standing -- long after he has left, she has left, he returns, she leaves -- long after he has left, and she stays standing, staring at where he once stood, as if she had the power to bring him back, his question chases circles in her head.

"What do we care?" _What do we care? What do we care? Do we care?_

She sees a past in their future. She sees it all happening again. She sees it all happening again.

It will all happen again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to A.G. for running ["It's a Garden", the Twilight Mirage zine](https://twitter.com/tm_zine) based off of [the soundtrack by Jack de Quidt](https://notquitereal.bandcamp.com/album/the-twilight-mirage-friends-at-the-table-soundtrack-season-four)! I wrote for track 30 - "Secure". I had a lot of fun working on this, and everyone else's works are totally amazing. If you didn't manage to snag a copy for yourself, check out the twitter, where everyone is posting their pieces!


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